THANK YOU FROM THE MISS MAJOR-JAY TOOLE
BUILDING FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE
GIVING CIRCLE

Thanks to you our community we raised over $40,000 to support the Audre Lorde Project, FIERCE, Sylvia Rivera Law Project, Streetwise & Safe and the retirement of Miss Major and Jay Toole.

Drawing from the lessons we learned exploring our communities traditions of giving, the impact of the racial wealth divide, and an uplifting each other's skills and gifts we came up with 3 fundraising strategies to resource our organizations and our elders. In our process that started in May 2014 and concluded March 2016 we chose and implemented strategies that uplifted our communities, honed in on our interest, passions, and skills to produce strategies to engage our community and every level of giving including monetary and non monetary gifts. These were our strategies:

Mapping Our Freedom - One stitch at a time: In honor of our continuous connection and legacy of shared political liberation work we are created a quilt to represent our four organizations struggle for freedom. The quilt is currently being curated at local organizations and foundations.

Hike for the Revolution: To learn about our communities legacies of resistance and struggles for land autonomy and access to public space.

Wine & Dine for MMJT: To gather our community together over wine and food as we celebrate each other and those that made our work and existence possible.

Check out the slideshow to see highlights from the Giving Circle!

While the giving circle is no longer collecting donations you can donate directly to:

About the MMJT Giving Circle:

The Miss Major Toole Building for Social Justice is home to four of New York City’s organizations committed to social justice for and by Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Queer, Two-Spirit, Trans*, and Gender Non-Conforming people of color, low-income people, youth, and people in the sex trades. Together, the Audre Lorde Project, FIERCE!, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, Streetwise and Safe are committed to building wellness, resilience, and providing vital resources for communities affected by racism, poverty, transphobia and homophobia. Each organization provides leadership development, direct services, policy and advocacy, or community organizing programs on behalf of LGBTSTGNC communities.

The MMJT Giving Circle is a collaborative fundraising and resourcing project committed to practicing our interdependence through resourcing our four organizations as well as honoring the lives and legacy of our elders Miss Major and Jay Toole by redistributing resources toward their retirement funds. We are building a practice of redistributing wealth that values all of the people in our communities while building economic justice analysis and power in queer and trans communities in NYC to sustain our collective livelihood.

Who we are:

We are a multi-racial, multi-class, and multi-gender group with members representing our four organizations.

Our organizations are made up of: LGBTQ people of color, youth, and people in the sex trades organizing, skill-sharing, and providing direct legal services for economic and racial justice; community wellness, safety, and resilience; and fighting to end state violence, policing, and prisons.

As New York City-based organizations committed to social justice by and for Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans, Queer, Two Spirit, Gender Non Conforming and Intersex (LGBTQTSGNCI) People of Color and low/no-income people, our communities and our work is typically under-resourced, underrepresented, and under-valued in mainstream LGBTQ organization and funders.

What we do:

We will spend six months of collective study and fundraising/resourcing to support the sustainability of our organizations in the service of our collective work against racism, poverty, ageism, police and state violence, transphobia, and homophobia, and toward building the safety, well-being, and resilience of our communities.

Over a 6 month period, members of the giving circle meet to:

Delve into readings, exercises, and discussions on our purpose and goals

Share collective and personal histories around the racial and gender wealth divide

Learn and share nuts and bolts of fundraising/resourcing and supporting each other’s fundraising work

Honor giving traditions, value, wealth, and worth outside of dollars

Evaluate our collective project and share lessons and strategies for the future

We are exploring this as a model for building the long-term sustainability of our movements in a racist capitalist system and historically and currently disinvests in our communities and our community members’ lives, especially Black and Latina trans women.

We are bringing our commitment to building our collective power in our movements to our fundraising/resourcing work because we know we are stronger when we are not isolated, including sharing resources.

We are shifting that competitive and scarcity-oriented mindsets that come from operating inside of capitalism and the nonprofit industrial complex.

Recognizing the extreme disinvestment Black, POC, trans, and LGBTQ communities and the real challenges to financial sustainability in our current economic and funding climate, we explore how we are strengthened in our fundraising/resourcing work by turning toward collaboration and abundance.

We are challenging capitalist values and strengthening our belief that we are not expendable and worth our organizations’ and movements’ investment/commitment.

The Miss Major-Jay Toole Building for Social Justice147 West 24th StreetNew York, NY 10011